We are the 99.9998 percent

801 billionaires. 346,689,001 of us. Let’s take Tesla down.

Mar 09, 2025

Happy Sunday. Some lessons from one of many excellent #TeslaTakedown protests at an New York City dealership Saturday.

Don’t stop. Anti-fur protesters outside department stores have been incredibly effective at stigmatizing fur. (Despite the promised comeback of fur as part of a Trump greed-and-sadism 80s aesthetic, all major department stores but Dillard’s have stopped selling it.) Go to Tesla Takedown to find a protest near you.
Outside car dealerships is an excellent place for a protest. Huge mix of people on the sidewalks—and, surprise, not one billionaire (I asked). Happy non-stop honks from buses & regular non-billionaires show that there is basically complete consensus that Musk must go.
It’s true that 801 American billionaires think billionaires deserve special powers and above-the-law status. But no one else does. This time we are the 99.9998 percent.

Here’s something I’d do differently. A sad truth of our time is that, hammered by autocratic and divisive propaganda, the American people have forgotten our powers. A big lesson from Occupy is that it’s galvanizing to foreground the people’s power. It builds solidarity and subdues despair. By steering iconography and chants toward to the people—ånd away from from Trump and Musk—we get the oxygen back.

(Some fifty years ago, the eccentric Sufi writer Idries Shah expressed surprise that anti-war protesters spent so much of time chanting the names of people they despised: “Hey hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” That was, he believed, far too gratifying to the people they named.)

5. To that end, I love signs and chants that remind the people of their galactic numbers and unique power and charisma:

+ “Who's got the power? We’ve got the power!”

+ “We are unstoppable! A better world is possible!”

+ “Our union, united, will never be divided!”

I like trash-talk as much as the next person, but I also like a break from those two ugly names.

Consider bringing a message about the people’s power to a Tesla Takedown protest.
Remember: WE THE PEOPLE are tanking Tesla’s stock. The stock price has fallen more than fifty percent. Since its peak of nearly $480 on December 17, Tesla's market cap has decreased by more than $800 billion. That’s much more than twice Elon’s “net worth”!
WE THE PEOPLE made headlines like this: “Elon Musk Is Officially $121 Billion Poorer Than His Peak—As Tesla Stock Erases All Of Its Election Rally.”
Musk’s absurd claim to the throne is predicated entirely on the myth of his “net worth” — which is NOT a net worth. It’s just a perception of the value of his partially-owned companies.
The cars, in the main, have been enshittified. Competition is fierce, especially in China. Tesla’s robot cabs and bots have been a big bust. The SpaceX rockets explode. Tesla’s long-promised “full self-driving” is never comings, Elon has admitted. X has lost all its value. As Musk put it: “I bought it for $44 billion and now it’s worth like 8 cents.”
And Musk keeps telling us how psychotic, sick, addicted, and insane he is. If he were anything but a white man, like Kanye or Britney Spears, he’d have been put in in-patient care long ago.
We can do this, one protest at a time. Corrections in the perception of Tesla and Musk will mean Musk’s market cap tanks—and his aura of “genius” and his claim to power crash.
To refuse to buy a Tesla, or to sell yours, is not like giving up your iPhone, a still-decent product that’s generally embedded in a network of family and friends.

If you’re in the market for the true best electric cars, welcome to Lucid, Rivian, Hyundai, VW and on and on. We have an Ioniq and love it.

If you have a Tesla can’t afford to sell in a shit resale market, there are bumper stickers for that. Plaster them on. Pro-democracy, anti-coup Tesla drivers are great & highly welcome; they also deliver activism on wheels.
Finally, I’m no hedgie or CEO but 95 percent of a company seems like a lot to lose to me. This is what Tesla is facing. Keep it up.